Statistical characterization of the reproducibility of neutron emission of small plasma focus devices

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to discuss the techniques related to the detection of fast pulsed neutrons produced in plasma focus (PF) devices, the statistical analysis of the corresponding data, and the methodologies for evaluation of the device performance in low emission neutron sources. A general mathematical framework is presented for the assessment of the reproducibility of the neutron emission of small PF devices given the shot-to-shot distribution and detector efficiency. The effect on the reproducibility in case of using two independent detectors is also discussed. The analysis is applied to the neutron emission of the plasma focus device PF-50J operating in repetitive mode (0.1-0.5 Hz and 65 J bank energy). V C 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx. FIG. 3. Comparison of the rate of increasing of the reproducibility due to the use of two independent similar detectors. For this case, q eq ¼ q 2 .

Influence of the Anode Length on the Neutron Emission of a 50 J Plasma Focus: Modeling and Experiment

“…The experiments were performed at the Chilean Nuclear Energy Commission in the compact PF device PF-50 J, which is a very-low energy PF device operating in the range of tens of Joules designed to produce fast discharges (quarter of period ∼150 ns) in H2 or D2 [11], [12], [18]- [20], [38]. The capacitor bank consisted in four units (40 nF, 20 nH, each) connected in parallel around a spark-gap.…”

“…Average of the neutron yield taken over all the shots of the sample and the 10% of the shots with higher neutron emission are given. The latter is typically referred in the literature as representative of the good shots [20] and was used to compare with the theoretical model.…”

“…The data is an extended set of results from the experimental study presented in [20] and [46], where a new technique was especially developed to measure neutron pulses of low intensity [39], [40]. The model is able to explain the dependence of the neutron yield with the pressure and anode length, and suggests a physical interpretation of the empirical scaling laws commonly used in PF design.…”

Impact of the β-Delayed Neutron Emission Probabilities Around A = 100–125 on the r-Process and the BRIKEN Project

“…The neutron rich nuclei produced by in fight fission of the accelerated uranium beam impinging on a beryllium target are separated, purified and identified by the BigRIPS spectrometer and eventually implanted in a stacked of several double-sided silicon strip detectors that detect radioactive isotopes and their subsequent β decay. A high and energy-independent neutron detection efficiency (about 71% in average for up to 5 MeV neutron) system of 3 He filled detectors embed in high density polyethylene moderator is built to detect delayed neutrons correlated in time with implantation and β decay [11]. A hybrid setup with high purity germanium clover detectors is also proposed to take advantage of the coincidence γ rays.…”

Calibration methodology for proportional counters applied to yield measurements of a neutron burst

“…The methodology is implemented for neutron yield measurements of D-D fusion neutrons generated in plasma focus experiments. 1,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18] In the final part of this article, it is presented an experimental verification of the accuracy of the methodology with respect to a foil activated detector. This work is a generalization of the work reported previously by Tarifeño-Saldivia.…”